[1][2] J-PAL funds, provides technical support to, and disseminates the results of randomized controlled trials evaluating the efficacy of social interventions in health, education, agriculture, and a range of other fields.

[2] In 2019, the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences was jointly awarded to J-PAL co-founders Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee, alongside economist Michael Kremer, "for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty".

[4] The Nobel committee highlighted Duflo and Banerjee's work building J-PAL in their report on the scientific background for the award, noting that the organization was "vital" in promoting the acceptance of randomized controlled trials as an empirical technique in development economics.

[6] J-PAL was founded in 2003 as the "Poverty Action Lab" by Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Sendhil Mullainathan, all of the economics department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

[13] Dhaliwal sits on J-PAL's executive committee, which also includes Duflo, Banerjee, Amy Finkelstein, Rema Hanna, Kelsey Jack, Benjamin Olken, and Tavneet Suri.

"[19] Throughout its history, J-PAL has been a vocal advocate of research transparency, supporting efforts to improve the quality of evidence from randomized controlled trials and ensure results are reproducible.

[1] For example, in 2012, J-PAL partnered with the American Economic Association to create a registration service for randomized controlled trials, allowing researchers to pre-register what analysis they hope to conduct before data is collected.

[20][21] J-PAL affiliates Rachel Glennerster and Edward Miguel published one of the earliest and highest profile studies to use a "pre-analysis plan", showing that pre-registration effectively prevented them from drawing erroneous conclusions.

[5] In 2008, Edward Miguel, a development economist and co-author of 2019 Nobel Prize co-laureate Michael Kremer, founded the Center for Effective Global Action at UC Berkeley to pursue a similar goal.

[25] The evaluations found that mobile extension services substantially increase the likelihood that farmers adopt recommended agricultural strategies, raising yields in a cost effective manner.

[30] In one example randomized controlled trial, J-PAL affiliaties Jenny Aker and Kelsey Jack evaluate a training program teaching farmers in Niger to harvest rainwater by digging demilunes (or semicircular bunds), combatting desertification of agricultural lands.

[32] The initiative is co-led by Rema Hanna and Benjamin Olken, and supports randomized controlled trials examining social protection schemes in low and middle income countries.

[32] In November 2022, J-PAL launched an additional division, its Science for Progress Initiative, under the leadership of Heidi Williams and Paul Niehaus,[33] of Dartmouth College and the University of California, San Diego, respectively.

[1] In 2024, it announced a partnership with the government of Côte d'Ivoire and the French Development Agency to equip civil servants with training in impact evaluation and the use of evidence in policy.

In 2019, J-PAL co-founders Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, and long time research affiliate Michael Kremer were awarded the Nobel prize in economics "for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty.

[49] For example, a paper by J-PAL affiliates Karthik Muralidharan, Alejandro Ganiman, and Abhijeet Singh evaluates an after-school program in India in which students spend time on Mindspark, an Edtech platform that algorithmically suggests remedial exercises based on performance on exam questions.

[49][50] A review of similar randomized controlled trials by J-PAL affiliates Philip Oreopoulos and Andre Nickow finds that software-aided instruction almost always yields better results than teaching conducted through conventional means.

[49][51] One of J-PAL's most influential lines of research was its experimental evaluations of microfinance programs aimed at alleviating poverty by providing the extreme poor access to loans without collateral or credit histories.

[53] Beginning in 2005, Banerjee, Duflo, Rachel Glennerster, and Cynthia Kinnan partnered with the Indian NGO Spandana to deliver loans of approximately $250 to poor women in the city of Hyderabad.

[52] With funding and support from J-PAL,[54] the researchers tracked participating women for three years, finding no effects of the program on measures of educational attainment, health, or female empowerment.

[52] Several follow on studies conducted by J-PAL affiliates in different geographic contexts have yielded similar results,[55][56] providing limited systematic evidence that microfinance has a transformative impact on recipient's lives.

[53][57][58] The research has prompted a relative decrease in the popularity of microfinance versus cash transfers and other social interventions shown in rigorous impact evaluations to have strong positive effects.

"[63] In 2019, J-PAL co-founders Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee were selected as the co-recipients of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences alongside Michael Kremer, then of Harvard University.